Stay on target

Honestly, Fox hasn’t done that badly with the X-Men franchise. Logan was genuinely one of the best superhero movies ever made, and the others have varied from competent to quite good. It really seemed like they were hitting their stride, but we’ll never know as the Disney / Fox merger is now uniting all of the Marvel Comics properties except maybe Spider-Man back into the mainline Marvel Cinematic Universe.

If you were more of an Avengers reader and never dipped your toe into the X side of the pool, the mass of comics and tie-ins and spin-offs can be a little daunting to get into. Fear not, old friend. We fired up Cerebro to generate a list of the must-read X-storylines.

Deadly Genesis

It may seem heretical to say this, but the original Stan Lee / Jack Kirby run on X-Men just isn’t that great. The school setting is interesting but Kirby doesn’t really let loose, most of the villains are pretty dull and it just never clicks. The real fun started in May of 1975 with the publication of Giant Size X-Men. When the original team is captured by living island Krakoa, Professor X reaches out in desperation to mutants all over the world to form a new team. Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler and others answer the call, forming the core that would carry the franchise to its peak.Buy it at Amazon.com

First Class

If you really want to read adventures of the original five X-Men, Jeff Parker’s X-Men: First Class is the best way to do it. The modern series looked to the past to explore the relationship between Professor Xavier and his first charges, telling sharp stories that typically wrapped up in a single issue. It’s a great way to get up to speed with the pre-Wolverine adventures without having to slog through a bunch of Silver Age filler.

Dark Phoenix Saga

If there’s one storyline that stands as the essential X-Men tale, it’s the Dark Phoenix saga. It wraps up so many of the series’ core elements into one epic that had repercussions for generations. In it, Jean Grey gets possessed by an alien force of incredible power – the Phoenix. It overwhelms her and genocides a planet or two before she regains control. Actions have consequences, and Jean’s final fate would change the way comics treated death and main characters. Of course, “final fate” doesn’t necessarily mean “final.” It’s like how there are a bunch of Final Fantasy games.

Imperial

Grant Morrison is the guy you call when you have an aging franchise that needs a shot of invention, and his run on New X-Men lifted the series out of the doldrums of the late 90s by rethinking just about everything we’ve come to know from the merry mutants. His whole run is solid, but for my money the Imperial storyline, which saw Professor X’s parasitic twin Cassandra Nova wreaking havoc on the team with the help of the alien Shi’ar. Big action, solid character moments and a truly memorable villain make this one of the better modern X-tales.

God Loves, Man Kills

Although the X-Men spend plenty of time battling superpowered foes, it’s the hate and prejudice of humans that really brings them down. 1982 graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills laid the groundwork for Magneto turning away from his villainous ways to join the X-Men as the team faces off with a fire and brimstone televangelist leading a crusade against mutants. It was loosely used as the inspiration for X2, but lost a lot of its religious fervor.

The Demon Bear Hunt

As the X-Men grew, the idea of them being students at the Xavier school seemed a bit silly. So in 1983, Marvel debuted The New Mutants, a series focusing on a fresh batch of faces training their abilities in the Dange Room. The book took a little while to find its footing, but when master Bill Sienkiewicz took over art duties with issue #18 it produced one of the most unforgettable stories the franchise has ever seen. Danielle Moonstar comes face to face with the demonic beast that killed her parents and overcomes it in a visually stunning sequence that still dazzles.

Wolverine & The X-Men

For all the change in the X-universe, things usually return to some sort of stable situation: there’s a school to train new mutants and X-Men save the world. The recent Wolverine & The X-Men series written by Jason Aaron mixed that up in a satisfying way. With Professor Xavier dead, the job of teaching falls to that most unlikely of men – Wolverine. He re-staffs the Jean Grey School and takes a new class of entertaining misfit mutants on adventures through time and space in this fun, breezy series.

Lifedeath

Master artist Barry Windsor-Smith only drew a handful of X-Men stories, but they’re some of the most emotionally potent in the series’ run. After mutant inventor Forge builds a weapon that accidentally strips Storm of her powers, the duo embark on a strange relationship – part romance, part hatred – that will take them to the depths of his past and the limits of her future. These are the stories that best capture the interior life of the X-Men and show why they pushed superhero comics to a new place at their peak.

Gifted</h2<

Joss Whedon was born to write the X-Men, and his run with John Cassaday is one of the modern era’s best. Seeing the return of fan favorite characters like Colossus to the team, Whedon captured the mix of spacefaring adventure and quiet personal moments without falling victim to nostalgia. These are new stories that feel like they could have fit right in during the team’s golden age, and they also introduce characters like Danger that add to the franchise in fascinating ways.

Days Of Future Past

Chris Claremont’s run on Uncanny X-Men was all about variety. The team went to space, traveled the globe, and spent quiet time at home. And in one of their most famous adventures, we visited a dystopian future where mutants were thrown into concentration camps and most of the team was dead. Days Of Future Past is the iconic “bad ending” story in superhero comics, positing the worst-case scenario for the mutant liberation movement. Writers have been cribbing from it for decades.